President Trump Hits the Panic Button, Publicly Interferes with Mueller Investigation and Manafort Trial
President Trump has hit the panic button.
In calling on Attorney General Sessions yesterday to shut down the Mueller investigation, of which he is a subject, the President publicly acted to obstruct the criminal investigation.
In tweeting a message yesterday supportive of Paul Manafort and labeling his criminal prosecution “a hoax,” the President improperly interfered with Manfort’s ongoing criminal trial.
President Trump apparently believes that the Mueller investigation is closing in on him and his associates. And the fact that Mueller knows a whole lot more than anyone else does, and that Trump doesn’t know what Mueller knows, is apparently only increasing the President’s anxieties.
The President’s actions yesterday are part of a pattern of increasingly erratic behavior in recent months, as evidenced in part by the dramatic increase in his false and misleading claims, as documented by The Washington Post.
According to the Post study, President Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims in his 558 days as President. This is an average of nearly 7.6 false and misleading claims a day.
But there has been a dramatic increase in the President’s false and misleading claims, from an average of 4.9 claims a day during his first 100 days in office, to an average of 16 false and misleading claims a day during the past two months, according to the Post.
On July 5, President Trump made an astonishing 79 false and misleading claims on that one day.
We have gone from the nation’s first President, George Washington, known for saying as a child that “I cannot tell a lie,” to our current President, Donald Trump, known as someone “who cannot tell the truth.”
For many months, President Trump’s mantra was “no collusion.” Now the line from President Trump and his public relations attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is still that there is no collusion, but even if there is, collusion is not a crime. This focus on “collusion” is simply an effort to confuse and distract the public.
The Mueller investigation has never used the word “collusion,” and the issue here has always been whether the President and/or his associates engaged in a conspiracy with the Russians to illegally intervene in our elections. Such a conspiracy would definitely be a crime.
We can expect more attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. For example, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon called today, in effect, for Rosenstein to be promptly fired.
The Trump attack dogs in the House, Reps. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH), are expected to press in September for passage of a meritless resolution to hold Rosenstein in contempt of Congress, which, if passed, President Trump could use as cover to fire Rosenstein.
It is essential that both Mueller and Rosenstein be forcefully defended at every step of the way. The removal of Rosenstein would allow the President to place a Trump “loyalist” in Rosenstein’s position of overseeing the Mueller investigation and allow the President, through his agent, to irreparably damage the investigation.
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Released: August 2, 2018
